National Football League

2022 NFL Draft: Hope at the draft in Vegas, where the house always wins

Updated Apr. 28, 2022 6:04 p.m. ET

By Charlotte Wilder
FOX Sports Columnist

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Cat Daddy, Flutter Hawk, Harley Bills and Buffalo Spartan looked like they were going to an NFL superfan convention as they walked past a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Las Vegas.

Which, to be fair, they kind of were — it’s just that in the sports world, we call it the NFL Draft.

These fans have real names. They’re D.J. Howell, Stacey Stewart, Tiffany Green and Dan Klien, and they met online as part of an NFL superfan group Green founded called "Elite Super Fans," which advocates for good sportsmanship and opposes bullying.

When I asked the group if I could take a video of them to show off their impressive get-ups, Howell and Klien were concerned that they weren’t decked out in their full costumes.

"If you’re gonna do this, we’ll be right back," Howell said. "I’m gonna get my stuff."

"Yeah, we’ll go get our helmets," Klien called over his shoulder as they ran back to their hotel, passing a bachelorette party walking in the opposite direction.

Five minutes later, the men reappeared, having successfully retrieved a Bills helmet and a giant Panther head from their hotel. They immediately struck up a conversation with a Titans fan who wanted a Tennessee-themed helmet like the ones they were wearing.

Las Vegas and the NFL Draft were meant for each other. Their union this weekend is like watching two chaotic, unpredictable, somewhat manipulative people get married by an Elvis impersonator at a drive-through chapel. They would each probably destroy anyone else in a relationship, but together, you think, "Maybe this thing can work."

Both are transactional in nature. You go to Vegas to spend, win and lose money. You go to the draft to watch teams spend money and to watch players win and lose it. You roll the dice on craps games at the Bellagio while franchises roll the dice on guys who will determine their futures. Status matters in Vegas and the Draft, and your current ranking depends on what you’ve done in the past.

The 2022 draft is the NFL’s biggest spectacle of the year in America’s biggest spectacle of a place. Spending time in Vegas feels like a dream — sometimes one of the fever variety, sometimes a nightmare — and I would imagine that being chosen to join an NFL club and given millions of dollars before the age of 24 must feel like one, too.

Ben and Max Walker, a father-son duo from Tampa Bay who were roaming the strip in Tom Brady jerseys, think the draft should be here every year. While they might not attend if it were in another city, they love the event no matter where it takes place. Ben said that the draft is the one place where fans wish one another the best instead of telling others they suck.

"We’ve just always been draft junkies," Ben said. "We love the hope it gives. Everybody thinks the draft is going to turn their team around. You’ve got that instant satisfaction in thinking you’ve got your team set, now you’ve got our quarterback for the next 10 years. You haven’t been proved wrong yet. There’s no game to prove if it was a good decision or not."

The Walkers hope the Buccaneers take a defensive lineman this year. Max wants Jordan Davis, the standout tackle for the national champion Georgia Bulldogs, but he knows Tampa Bay would have to trade up to get him (Davis is projected to go in the top 10 or close to it).

Many fans I talked to in Vegas seem to want "a big guy," as one Chargers fan put it.

The draft is usually most exciting — or at least, it gets the highest TV ratings — when it features a quarterback- or wide-receiver-heavy class, but this year, people seem to believe in the importance of getting stops on defense and protecting the quarterbacks they already have.

(Except for Seahawks fans, that is. Stacey Stewart, aka Flutter Hawk, told me she’s desperate for Seattle to take a QB after trading Russell Wilson this offseason. That said, she really wants the team to bring in Colin Kaepernick, who hasn’t played in five years after publicly protesting racial injustice).

Even a group of Lions fans named Jeremy, James, Jake and Jason thought those Bucs fans were right: There’s reason to dip their toes in the optimism pool.

But they’re not fully jumping in.

"This is our Super Bowl," James said. "This is all we got. We’re not making the real Super Bowl."

"We haven’t won a playoff game since 1991," Jason said. "I was 10 years old. It was my 10th birthday when they won."

"Obviously," he said, laughing, "I'm not 10 anymore. We ran off Barry Sanders, arguably the best running back in history. We ran off Calvin Johnson, who could’ve been the best receiver in history. We lost Matthew Stafford, who gets traded and wins a Super Bowl. But this year, we’ve got a good coach we like, so we’ll see."

Like these Lions fans, Las Vegas is an honest place. I spent more than a month in this city during the Golden Knights’ inaugural season in 2018. I had never been here before, and I didn’t think I’d like it very much.

But I was won over by the lack of pretense. Even the buildings are obviously trying to sell you something (though it’s not always clear what), with their walls draped in giant banners of Martha Stewart’s and Lisa Vanderpump’s faces. Chris Rock’s voice booms out over the strip to try to convince you to buy tickets to his show.

Las Vegas is an alien place made of neon and filled with man-made pools and lakes in the middle of a desert. It doesn’t pretend to be real any more than Lions fans pretend they’ll win it all. This city tells you what it is from the moment you get off the plane and are greeted by airport slot machines.

But it’s also a place filled with lots of normal people living normal lives. The strip is a tiny part of Vegas. Suburbs stretch for miles outside the city. Beyond the cul-de-sacs, you see sand, tumbleweeds and red mountains rising out of the earth, looking like our planet wanted to change its hair and brought pictures of Mars to its hairdresser for inspiration.

Similarly, the draft contains thousands of human stories. Every player who walks the red carpet Thursday has come from somewhere. This day is about to change their lives — and hopefully their families’ lives — forever. There are webs of people connected by the events of the draft, people who have supported these young men to ensure they got here at all.

Players and fans will benefit, but in Vegas, the house always wins. And at the draft, the NFL is the house. It’s putting on a spectacle the way the casinos do: flashing lights, blasting music, spraying fountains. It’s providing fans with a memorable experience even if they come away losers. The draft stage itself is set up over the fountains at the Bellagio, and at noon on Thursday, fans were watching a Cirque de Soleil show in the exact spot where the fates of their teams will be decided this evening.

People who come to Vegas and the NFL Draft don’t show up because they know they’ll win or because they’re guaranteed the best player their franchise has ever seen. They show up because they hope for that.

And come the end of next year’s Super Bowl, one fan base will have been right. The other 31 will wait until next year, when once again, no matter how abysmal the season or how many games the Lions lose, they’ll have reason to hope.

"It’s the perfect place for the draft because it’s a gamble, as we know," Lions fan James said. "It doesn’t always pay off. But it’s fun to be here."

Charlotte Wilder is a general columnist and cohost of "The People's Sports Podcast" for FOX Sports. She's honored to represent the constantly neglected Boston area in sports media, loves talking to sports fans about their feelings and is happiest eating a hotdog in a ballpark or nachos in a stadium. Follow her on Twitter @TheWilderThings.